Empower, Equip and Improve

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. I am excited. I'm revved up if you can't tell sound of my voice Fired up to share with you some really important agency leadership principles today. In fact, what I'm going to share with you are three key principles or ideas that came from this past week. And this is really some reflections from my heart and I always try to take a look at things that I'm experiencing have the opportunity to experience personally, professionally, typically professionally. But you're going to hear today is a combination of both that has some key leadership lessons. And so what I'm going to correlate today may sound a bit odd because it is, but there's a huge impact and there's some great lessons from it. I'm going to share what I've learned from my wife's 40th birthday birthday party. Okay, bear with me. There's, there's, there's a reason for this and also my experience with the Agency Leadership Institute this past week in Cincinnati, Ohio. So what these two completely separate events there was some correlation with some common leadership themes and I want to share that and it really is all about you, the agency leader helping you become that best version possible of your of yourself and certainly your team. And always want to mention the best version possible book it is out. I mentioned this on most podcasts but really want you to get opportunity to get your hands on it whether it's audio. We have an audio book out there also the Kindle edition but if you go to sitkins.com bvp for best version possible you can get your copy and actually just got back. I'll mention on this podcast the Agency Leadership Institute that I was part of in Cincinnati. On the first session of that I gave every agency leader a copy of the book and and I had several of the agency leaders that I had a chance to talk in different areas of the conference and a couple of them said directly we've already got this thing highlighted and dog eared and taking action on some of the the practical steps in the book and we really kept this to a very practical book that your agency can begin to implement. So go check it out. Best version possible. So I want to get into the the podcast today and again this are reflections from my heart. What is a 40th birthday party and a leadership Institute have in common. And I'll start with the 40th birthday party because it's, it's My wife, she finally turned 40. I say that finally because I'm a little bit older than she is, but she turned 40. And I. I gotta start off by kind of calling out myself. I am. I'm a terrible gift giver. I really am. I mean, I hate. I am. I'm not. Not a good gift giver. It's not because I don't love people or want to help people. I just. I forget. I get distracted, right? And it goes back to something that's not good enough. Because I've said this on this podcast before. Silent gratitude is no gratitude at all. There's a. There's a lesson to remember, right? So I'm thinking about this. I'm like, okay, I've done a miserable job of giving my life gifts. I mean, yes, we do things, but like a really thoughtful, proactive gift. And so, several months before her birthday, I'm like, I've got to get on this earlier. I've got. I've got to. I've got to. I've got to be intentional with this. And a week would go by, and I'm like, okay, next week. And a week would go by and next week. And finally I'm like, all right, I got to figure this out. So I reached out to two of her good friends, and I also my two oldest daughters. One's in college and one's in high school. And I said, listen, I need all your help. And I said, but, But. But to get your help, I got to share a vision with you. And so I said, you know, obviously, Tracy's birthday is coming up. It's her 40th birthday. My wife and I want this to be really special. I want to be memorable. I want it to be something that. That she can say. I was, you know, just really excited to be part of that. It meant a lot to me. It was a great experience, Right? That's what I was going for. And I said, that's what I really want. I said, here's the problem is I'm not sure how to do it all, and I would really love your input. And one of her good friends said, gosh. She goes, I love throwing parties. I love it. It's one of my favorite things to do. It gets me excited to put that together and do it. I'm like, oh, my gosh. Her other friend says, I love to create memorable gifts. In fact, she's a gift basket company. But I love to create memorable gifts and to do this. And my daughters are like, hey, we love to help out with this. Stuff we want to help Mom. Like, great. Here is the vision. This is what I want to accomplish, right, with, with this gift. And, you know, here's kind of my big overall picture and theme. Can you help me out and do it? They said, yes, we'd love to. Right? And then I empowered them and I equipped them, right, to go do it. I said, listen, I trust all of you. You know, you're great at this. You know, provided them some funding certainly to go do it. And by the way, it was a great birthday party. It was a great experience. In fact, I just got back from the second thing that I'm going to get to the Leadership Institute. My wife said, hey, I was just want to tell you again, that birthday party was really memorable. I want to thank you again for doing it. And I thought, thank goodness for a good team. All right, so that's the first part I just want to give you paint the picture here. The second part was the Agency Leadership Institute that I was part of in Cincinnati, which was right after the birthday, this next. This, this following week and had a great opportunity. This was our second session. This is hosted by Cincinnati Insurance company. Do a great job in relationships with their partners. Just really excited to see and see a company. And I know there's a lot of carriers that really do care about their agents at a high level, but Cincinnati, to see that in action was really really, it was really, it was really cool. It really was. And to have these agency leaders that come there to learn, to grow, to mastermind, to share and also be fed right a little bit in different ways was really neat. And as I got done and I was debriefing the Agency Leadership Institute session that I was part of, it hit me. I said, you know, of all the things that all my notes of what was shared and discussed, I said, what some of the best agency leaders are doing is that they're very clear on the vision that their team can not only just hear it, but they see it and they feel it. And number two is they're empowering their best people and certainly the people with unique skill sets to carry these things out. And then they're always fine tuning, looking for feedback to how to get a little bit better. Right? So this is what I'm getting to. This was the correlation between my wife's birthday and again, this is not to give. It really isn't to give kudos to myself because quite frankly, I mentioned I'm a terrible gift giver. But for the first time in a long time, I took my own leadership lesson and created a compelling vision and empowered other people and equipped them to go do it, and then got some feedback. Although the feedback thing I'm not worried about for the birthday party, but the Agency Leadership Institute absolutely is the case. And so what can you take from this? And hopefully you're already hearing some of these themes for you as an agency leader. And I just have questions for you. Right. As an agency leader, is your vision of your agency compelling enough that the right people and the best people are fully attracted to it, want to be a part of it, and are motivated to take action around it? Right. That to me, is the first principle I want to share with you is do I have a compelling vision that other people would want to follow, or they're attracted to what's my compelling vision? Now, a lot of people could say, well, you know, in two years I want to do this or three years or five years. And this is something I really want you to take heart as an agency leader. Because at the Agency Leadership Institute as well, again, and none of us have this perfect. But the top leaders there and some of the success stories that they had in different areas and it might even be different pockets of the agency, but they were very clear and compelling on their mission, where they were going, why it was important, the impact that they would have. Right. In others, whether it's their community, their clients, their team of what that meant. Right. So number one is what is your clear and compelling vision if you don't have one? Well, what does it need to be if you have a decent one? How can I make it even better? Right. People are emotionally engaged with those things. And as much as we do need to give tactics and processes, we've got to have a compelling vision that people emotionally go, I want to be part of that. And by the way, this is critical, too, for attracting and retaining the best talent. Right. There's this emotional connection. It isn't just about the money. Yeah. It's part of it. But it really is about this emotional connection of a bigger, brighter future. Right. So that's. That's number one. The other part of that, if I wanted to associate that with number one, it's also understanding that you have, as Dan Sullivan talks about, a unique ability in what you do as an agency leader. Right. Which means there's certain things that you do really, really well, and there's certain things that you're not very good at. Right. I mentioned in my own component, I'm really bad at planning and gifts and that kind of stuff. And this comes back to where you see agencies struggle with this too is the fact that their heart, their intention is good, but because it becomes difficult or challenging or not their unique skill set, right? And maybe they've done it in the past and because they've done it themselves, it hasn't worked very well. They just kind of lose sight of it, forget about it and go, oh, whatever, it's not worth it. Right. So a big part of the compelling vision is then to attract and then recruit the people with those unique abilities, as Dan Sullivan says, or other strengths. Right. God given abilities that they have to utilize those at the highest capacity they can. Right. So that to me is just the whole idea of this first thing and it's so powerful and I think sometimes it gets missed in agencies because you can a lot of things as an agency leader, you have a lot of talents and skills or you wouldn't be in that position. But are you deploying, right, the right people to do some of the things that maybe you're a bit inefficient with or ineffective with versus saying, well, I can still do it at 40%, yeah, somebody can do it at 85 or 90%. And you've got to be able to share that vision. They want to be part of it. Which leads me to number two and others. Those first were kind of like 1A, 1B. But number two is this. You've got to empower and equip them to actually do it. Right? You've got to empower and equip other people on your team as a leader to actually do it. One of the things I heard so much at the Agency Leadership Institute is the fact that yes, they would have an idea or a vision that they're sharing or direction they were going or a goal they were looking to attain. But what would sometimes get them stuck in the past, and we hear these stories is I was never able to fully give it up or empower other people, people to carry it through. I always had to have my hands in it versus saying, listen, if you're on this team, you're on this team for a reason. And I want to empower you and equip you with tools and resources to make sure that you can fulfill that responsibility at the highest level that you can. Right? In fact, one of the things I heard this years ago, responsibility without authority is a version of hell on earth, right? Responsibility without authority, meaning, well, you're responsible for this stuff, but I'm not going to give you authority to actually do it. And that could Be authority and actually transfer of power. That could be authority in financial equipping, having the resources or tools to get it actually done. Right. We're not going to invest in that, but I expect you to get it done. Right. So you as an agency leader ask yourself, am I empowering and equipping the key people around me to fulfill the responsibilities so they can carry it through. Right? And just take some time to think about that. In fact, go to the key people around you and say, listen, what else do you need? Right? As far as resources or tools or what can I do? Even empowering could be giving your voice to them, meaning that you go in front of the entire team and say, listen, Susan or Joe is in charge of this. They're number one. If you have questions or problems, you go to them because I am fully empowering them to get this done. That happens a lot in agencies too. This happens for any organization is that we say, hey, listen, go out and do it. But the team is still looking to you or me because we haven't officially empowered them. Right? And part of that is communication. Part of that is funding, resources, tools to say, listen, do you have everything you need? Right? Have an honest conversation around. And now sometimes people get worried because like, well, you know, I mean, they always are looking for more. They need more. They need more. Yes. There's got to be a conversation, accountability around what it really takes to execute something. But don't leave people short. Don't just say, good luck, go do it. Right? That's not really empowering. It's certainly not equipping. So that's, that's number two. And then number three is this, this is this constant improvement, right? And this to me is, is true of anything. Then when you go get a result, then it's how do we improve that result? And by improving the result doesn't necessarily mean that, well, now next time I do it, I mean, unless it really goes bad and you learn lesson that way. But typically what the result you improve is, is, hey, listen, you know, this was the vision. This is what we were empowered and equipped to go do. This is what you did. What did you learn? What's going to be better next time? How can I help you more? All these questions, but we're constantly looking for feedback, right? That's one of the things that, that so often can happen, organizations, certainly insurance agencies, is that we go and do something but we don't fully learn from what we just did. I had a great mentor, I love that said you can't improve A result till you go get a result. Right? So go get the result and then look for ways to improve upon. And again, as I was talking to to agencies at the Agency Leadership Institute, that was one of the things that really came to light was the fact that, hey, listen, my, you know, I have a vision of the future. I've done my best to empower and equip key people. And then part of this is now I want to become a mentor and a coach. I want to be able to help my next level of leaders to say, what did you learn from this? You know, what was the impact? How could you improve? What worked, what didn't, what why? And you ask these questions, guess what? They're going to think through the now they've got the experience. And by the way, I love this quote. I heard this from John Maxwell. He said, people say that experience is the best teacher. He said, no, I believe that evaluated experience is the best teacher. So we got to evaluate the experience and what it means, right? So these are the three lessons I tied together. Again, kind of strange, but I was thinking about this like my wife's 40th birthday party and I'm like, wow, like I think I was able to share a pretty compelling vision of, of what it is that I really wanted. I know this is a different, pretty simple and in essence, right, to share that kind of vision, but then to empower, to equip people to do it. And again, the feedback thing, bottom line was this. My wife loved it. So, you know, she's not going to have another 40th birthday party. But there are lessons to learn even in my own life, right around, oh, what are some other areas or things that I could do and to be able to set visions right even in my own household, right. As a family leader that would be able to empower, equip and then of course continue to get better in different areas. And certainly with the agency Leadership Institute that I was part of and those agencies and agencies we work with as our private client members or members of our all inclusive model, again, the Sitkins Network members, it's that same thing. It's the idea of have a vision that's worth following or being compelling. Empower equip people and continually get feedback to improve that result to get better and better and better. Right? So listen, this is my conversation from my heart to yours. Hope you gain value and just take a few ideas as a leader of how you can do that. I just, my passion around leadership continues to grow. I've always known the impact or continue to learn the impact of leadership. But the more I'm around agencies and agency leaders, there's some great responsibility. It's going to sound like Spider man, right? But great power comes great responsibility. There is great responsibility there. But the opportunity that you have as an agency leader to certainly impact your own life. But I think what we see with great agency leaders, what they really love to do and what fires them up is how can I impact the lives of my team members? How can I impact the lives of future leaders? How can I impact the lives of my community? How can I impact the lives of my clients who are what kind of not even a legacy for me, but something that goes beyond me in the term of good to the world? How can I do that? And I think these three things are going to be steps for you to do that at a higher level. Figure out that true compelling vision, empower and equip people and continually improve it. Upgrade the experience by getting feedback and evaluating what worked and what did. Listen as always, a pleasure to be with you. If this if this podcast or this episode or others, I've got some great guests. In fact I'm going to bring. I've got a whole list of people I'm going to be inviting this podcast that I know will come on, share their leadership wisdom with you, the Agency Leader give you more tips and ideas to grow and succeed in this very challenging but very amazing business that we all live in, which is the independent insurance agency. I can't wait to bring them on. So with that, wish you all the best in your success. Thanks for listening. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the fine folks of the Rough Notes Company. They are publishers of the insurance industry's leading magazine and technical insurance content. Roughness Magazine Profile successful agencies plus keen insights from respected experts on a host of must know topics. RoughNotes Advantage plus provides the tools to help your agency grow, providing authoritative information on complex coverage issues. Visit them and learn more@roughnotes.com.